Friday, July 31, 2009

On a week day, Arimathea was ready to go to his school. It started out as every other day for him, but how much it was different he did not know about it. That was the day he realized how much he loved his school.

While Arimathea and some of the children were entering the gates to school, a strangely clad man stood in front of them and made a few tricks. The children were amused seeing his tricks. He offered them chocolates aiming to kidnap the children. But the school watchman noticed this and attacked the man and guarded the children safely in to school and he also warned the children about this man.

Arimathea thought "Thankfully we have a wonderful watchman"

The school alarm rang and all the students assembled for the prayer session. The principal Ms Ajantha, addressed the children. She told that all should keep the premises clean and should act right at school and at home. All should become model children with good behaviour and good attitude and study diligently bringing laurels to the school. She made important announcements and instructed teachers.

Arimathea thought " Wow, she speaks so nicely and all the students and teachers listen and obey her, one day I want to become a principal".

In the class room, the teacher asked who was absent today in the class. The children answered that Alim is absent, she is not in her seat.At the class, during the number activity time and the teacher asked the children to add the numbers 2 and 2. "Children, what is 2 + 2 = ?". Everyone answered 2+2=4. The teacher appreciated the children as they answered correctly

Arimathea thought "Thats so good to have a teacher who teaches us about so many things".

Then the music class started and they all listened to their piano master. Arimathea admired his piano master as he played one of his favourite tunes.

Arimathea thought "School is fun, and the music class is my favourite class".

Soon there was a loud noise and one of the children had a head injury and was crying aloud because of severe head ache. He was rushed to the first aid room and was attended by a resident doctor at school.

Arimathea thought "Thats so good to have a doctor at school to attend the emergencies".

The teacher was annoyed and shouted, " What is going on here ?" seeing the two boys running around the class room. The teacher then taught them a "Story of a Wealthy Beggar"

There was a beggar who begged at the school gate. He had a dirty sack always with him. All the people give him money because he was poor and he stored it in his sack. One day the school did not allow the beggar to stand near the gate and beg. He did not agree to go away from the premises. He was forced to leave so fell down with his sack. Now, what do you think happened ?.

His sack opened and all the money he collected over years fell around. The people who stood near the gate got amazed seeing how much money this beggar had. They started attacking him. The police interfered, cleared the crowd and arrested the beggar for cheating the people.

The kids were all packing to go home, when the teacher called for their attention and told, "I advise all of you to participate in the Atheletic event arranged by the Gaming Club". Winners will be awarded trophies and attractive gifts.

After the classes were over the van attendant collected all the children. Altogether there were 20 children in the van.

Arimathea asked his friends to accept some of his snacks.

As Arimathea was leaving the school he thought "This is the school I love very much".

Saturday, July 25, 2009

Kinder garteners soon after having fun with rhymes are challenged with the story telling. Story telling is a great thing to learn well at the childhood as it creates a very good impact on the whole learning process. Also the essence of the learning is to improve vocabulary inorder to express exactly the same way one feel about things around them. Stories are a great means to introduce new words and it is loads of fun.

There are these following aspects of the story that a child needs to understand:1. The characters2. The vocabulary3. The sequence4. The emotions

Kids have to visualize the story as they tell it, otherwise they might get lost while reciting even though they understand the story. There are few techniques described below. The basic idea behind most of the below described techniques is to teach using visuals. There are many ways the story can be brought live visually. By the following techniques the child gets a definitive sense of characters, sequence and emotions. The vocabulary of the story can be taught well ahead of learning the story, so they might feel confident with the familiarity of the words during story narration.

Dramatizing the story: There are two ways to dramatize a story.a) Everyone in the home or among the friends can assume a character of the story and start enacting their part. This way the child gets an idea of the time at which, each of the scenes gets enacted and understands the emotions behind the story very well.b) Create a story scene using card board that goes as the background for enacting the characters and make sure the characters are made movable so that the verbs in the story can be acted out. The child will have great fun in enacting the story this way and may try out twists and turns in the story line.

Colouring Pages: Create a pencil sketching of the story line in a drawing book and go through the story over and over again showing the pages. Ask the child to colour the page and recite that part of the story. This technique helps them to register the image quiet well and will remember the sequence of the story much better than we do while teaching them.

Story board: As they grow up, the story gets bigger and definitely need a better tool that could be used to visualize them. The story board technique is, in which you can write the whole story in a big paper. It is important to draw and colour all the picture words and try minimizing the words on the paper this way the child gets the sense of the characters time of entry in each scene. The verbal accompaniment of the story board, suggests the child about the length of the dialogue.

Talk Stories: Another efficient tool that can be simply used is to talk stories like:a) I happened to see that, first it was…. then … and finally what happened was.b) Did he do that… how did he react … Did he run …Allow the child to visualize the scene and understand the sequence by hinting or clueing as required at each part of the story.

Television: Another excellent way to teach a story is to view a favourite show with your child and narrate the story for them, to emphasize on the new words used and to show them the descriptive style of the same story that was played with dialogue conversations.

New Story: Creating a new story is a very efficient and a great way to teach words of a particular context. Invest in a good picture dictionary book and teach kids the words used commonly in a park or a restaurant and the like and create a fun story that happened in a park using all the words they learnt. This will help them remember the newly learnt words very well and also will help them to think creatively.

Picture books: Buy picture words books and picture story books that are great introductions for story learning and telling.

Hey, if this article was informative or beneficial for you. Please put down your comments below. Also if you are not satisfied dont hesitate to mention your remarks, as it will be useful for me to update the article for future readers.